March Devotion

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2

Lent is an amazing time, a time when we focus on Christ more than we normally do, and for good   reason as well. After all He did die on a cross, go to Hell and defeat sin death and the power of the devil so that one day we could all join Him in Heaven.

Sometimes I think that we discount what Christ really did for us, somehow we forget that he was not only the perfect God, but also perfect man. Man being the key word in this phrase here, we forget how much he really struggled with what he was about to do for us through the journey of what is now called Lent.  Take a moment to really meditate on the word shame above in the verse from Hebrews, think about what this word means to you yourself. Think of a time you have felt shame in your life. No really take a moment, ill wait………

The shame that we have felt is nothing compared to what our perfect God and yet perfect man had to experience in the time leading up to His death. The walk to the hill called Golgotha, placing the sign “King of the Jews” above His head, constant mocking spitting and attacking of His perfect Holy self.

What about the Pain? If you look in the next verse in Hebrews it says “in your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood”.  Guess what, Christ did! In Gethsemane Christ so full of stress and anxiety knowing what was going to happen to Him that He literally started to sweat blood. How many of us can say that has ever happened to us. That does not even begin to explain the pain that He must have experienced from the Roman guards and numerous other people who were ordered to beat Him to as close to death as possible.

In the movie “The Passion of the Christ” Mel Gibson gives one of the most realistic pictures I believe, we have ever seen into what Christ’s journey was to Golgotha. It was a journey of blood, sweat, tears, and shame.  Every Good Friday I watch the movie, there are numerous times through it, that I have to shut my eyes, and even leave the room.  It is an extremely powerful picture of what Christ went through to rescue His beloved.

This Lenten journey I would challenge you to really think of what Christ’s Sacrifice was. It was a      journey of blood, sweat, tears and shame. Shame that He took on for us, so that we will join Him one day in an amazing place called Heaven. Blessings on you and your family’s Lenten Journey.

Through Him alone,

Ryan Strehlow

February Devotional

Come let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our   salvation. Come let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. Psalm 95: 1&6

Currently we are caught in the middle of the two biggest church seasons of the year, Advent (Christmas) and Lent (Easter).  These seasons are so big that often we see many families coming out of the wood work to bring praise and worship to the Lord on such significant days, His birth and His death.  These are huge times of the year! Our Lord was born, and about thirty years after, his death is the only reason that we have a hope for the future.  But what about the fifty other Sunday’s of the year?

Now I am not here to convict those who only worship on Christmas and Easter but rather to ask myself, and probably a lot of you who struggle with the same thing as wellwhat are we doing the   other fifty Sundays of the year? I can probably count on both of my hands and maybe a couple toes the amount of church that I have missed in my life. However, I cannot begin to comprehend the amount of times that I have “been” in worship but have only been there and not actually focused on what God is trying to tell me that day.

Why is that? Why do we get so caught up in this two inspirational church seasons and then just drop off for the rest of the Sunday’s of the year, even if we are present in worship? I think a large reason is that we see the Word becoming Flesh. We literally see God’s Word come alive to us in the form of   Jesus. Yes we hear God’s Word and the words that Jesus spoke the rest of the year through the gospel but it becomes familiar to us.

Now of course everything that we do in this life is, or should be form of worship to our God, but I am specifically talking about the gift of community worship that God gave us and we are allowed to  practice in this country.  We have the opportunity around 52 times a year, not counting mid week worship, to come with fellow believers and worship our great and powerful God with all our might and strength. “To kneel before the Lord our Maker”.

There is a reason that God has brought into His house to worship Him, to come before Him with praise and thanksgiving. He comes to us through His Word every time we step through the front doors of wherever you and I worship with other believers to give all praise and glory to Him. Most importantly to hear the Words that He gave to his messengers to tell us. We all would be wise to listen, not just through Advent and Lent, but all year.

Through Him Alone,

Ryan Strehlow

Excited to see you all back in the Midwest this next week!

NADCE and Call news

Hello everyone. I just returned from a beautiful week in sunny California and wanted to update you on my trip as well as the call process here in Alaska.

The week in California was amazing, the speakers were great, time away from the church for a bit was great, and most of all seeing friends and making new ones was by far the best part of the whole conference.  The conference ran Tuesday night to Thursday around noon, but I was in California from Monday morning to Friday late afternoon.  It gave myself quite a bit of down time, but most importantly to see many of my friends from the program who I missed and Adam and Kyla as well.  The theme of the conference was #connect so I was able to meet many new DCE's and some very respected DCE's in our synod as well.  The worship experience when I was there was absolutely phenomenal.  We were led in worship by Kip Fox who lead the worship at the last national youth gathering that was in Orlando, Florida.  So it felt pretty cool to go from seeing him in front of 25,000 people to now only in front of 150.  We had about 1/4 of the DCE's from synod represented at the conference so there was many connections to be made.

Now to the point im sure you are all waiting for.  Last Sunday Our Redeemer as a congregation voted to officially extend me a call for the position that I currently am serving under now.  So now I basically am praying quite a bit and deciding whether or not I believe that this is where God wants me to be. The date for a decision that I am shooting for is when I come back for midyear in a couple weeks, but it could go quicker, or it could take longer.  I am not one to test God so this answer will only come on His time.

More than anything I hope that you all will pray for me and my understanding of what I believe God's call is for my life.  It is not my will, but His.

Thank you all for the support that you have given me through this year thus far, and the continued support and prayers that I know I will receive.

Blessings,

Ryan

January Devotion

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7

“Don’t worry.” How many times has someone told you this, or have you find yourself telling someone these wise words? It’s such an easy thing to say to someone else, however when we find ourselves in a similar situation it is so hard for us to take our own advice.

I consider myself a very easy going person, and able to roll with the punches that this sinful world throws my way on a day-to-day basis, however I was not always this way.  After my father had passed at such an early age I worried about everything you could possibly imagine. If my mother was five minutes late from picking me up from basketball practice, if there was a tornado warning, even crawling into bed every night was a challenge for me (probably the biggest), and an even bigger one for my extremely patient mother.

I found myself attending Christian counseling often, and finally one thing got through to me, and that was prayer.  My counselor, Doug, wrote out a prayer for me on a small sheet of paper to keep in those awful Velcro wallets that we used to have growing up.  I was to read this prayer every time that I was worried. This task was a little bit more difficult than one would think since I did not have much of a reason to carry around a wallet with on $1 and few quarters, but that stuck with me. That prayer still rests in my top drawer in Milwaukee with that awful wallet, but I still remember what Doug taught me, prayer is powerful.

So often we overlook prayer in our daily lives because we don't trust it. Which can only mean one thing, that we do not trust God.  In addition when we actually do slow down and have some prayer time it is just us telling God what we think (key word) we need.  God wants to have a conversation with us, not  just have us throw requests at His feet like he is a magic Jeanie who will give us three wishes, if that was the case I hope you all would wish for a million more wishes, I’m not sure how that got overlooked in all these movies. God rather wants to have a relationship with us, that is why we were created!

This month in Sunday Night Life we are going to talk about prayer. Different types of prayer, how to go deeper in our prayer lives as a family, as individuals, and how to make that relationship with God deeper.  Two very simple adjustments can be made to your prayer life to make this phase of your walk with Christ a conversation. The first is for every prayer request you have, thank God for something that He has done for you, is doing for you, or something of that nature. The second is to just stop, be silent, it’s a conversation for a reason. Quiet your heart and soul and see what God has to say back at you.  You may be surprised by what you have been missing.

Through Him Alone,

Ryan Strehlow– DCE Intern

Christmas Madness

Well I once again have failed at informing you all of my life more than once every couple of months. I apologize.  I have no excuses apart from the fact that I was busy, and lazy, also watching Illinois lose to Mizzou seems like a better past time than writing a blog, but here we go!

So Christmas time in the Church is crazy busy! Who would have thought? It seriously was crazy though, we had our Children's Christmas service the weekend before Christmas on December the 16th which was nice to spread out the mass chaos that seemed to run about everywhere. All of the Advent services, and also where the date of Christmas fell this year we had Sunday service on the 23rd, two services on the 24th and also a service Christmas morning.  It was an awesome experience though and many families took me in for the days before and after Christmas, which made me feel as though I was not as far away from home as I thought I was.  Christmas eve I was over at two different church families houses for dinner, and Christmas day I spent with one family for almost the whole day. The day after Christmas  I went to "boxing day party" at one of the church families houses as well. Needless to say I had enough food to eat, and enough company to share.  Alaskan's do these crazy things called hikes before your allowed to eat dinner as well, something about staying healthy was their reasoning. I wasnt really listening but for some reason this Christmas I didnt gain my classic 10 pounds.

Honestly though I cant begin to describe how amazing people are in the church, and how well they take care of church workers around Christmas, and of course through the rest of the year as well.  I received so many gift cards that will help me out with grocery's and also getting some fun stuff for myself as well.  It was way above and beyond what I ever expected to receive from anyone, and I was not expecting to get anything from anyone. It seriously was unreal.

Sunday is a pretty big day. The church votes on whether they are going to issue a call or whether they are going to continue forward with two part time workers for the congregation.  Depending on what their choice is, and possibly what my choice is after that It could have huge implications on my life for awhile.  More than anything I am praying that God's will is done on Sunday and I hope that is what all of your prayers are as well please.

On Sunday night I also head to California for the NADCE conference! which is a huge gathering of DCE's that happens once every three years which is a pretty big deal! Im very excited to see some friends from the DCE program and Adam and Kyla will be in attendance as well which is pretty exciting, I miss the the two of them very much.

After Christmas and between New Years I took a bit of break from work and hung out with my good buddy Trent up here and his Fiance Shawna.  It was nice to take a breather from work and just hang out for a bit.  I have been working well into February due to the fact that I am going to be gone so much in January around here.

I look forward to coming home to see you all in less than a month! I also am going to start posting the devotions that I write for our monthly newsletter on here, now that I actually write them myself so I hope that you all enjoy them as well!

I hope that all is well in the lower 48 and I cant wait to see you all very very soon! Thank you for continued prayers that you send all the way up here, I can tell you they are reaching God continues to bless in ways that shock me every day that I am up here.

~Ryan

Wait what I have a blog?

Alright the secret is out, this clearly is not the most important thing on my to do list though the week, or month for that matter. However I still should probably start to do a better job for you all on this whole blog thing.

Things are going extremely well here in Alaska, and extremely busy as well!  The weeks literally seem to fly by and are full of new adventures every week.  I am finally to a point where I can say that I am quite a bit ahead of schedule for things that I need to do on office work, so I am able to work on other things through the day here, and get things done.  Ill try my best to run through a few things below and catch you all up on different things that have been keeping me away from this blog.

The most fun thing is my group that we recently started here called Sunday Night Life.  Its a group of birth through fifth graders, and their family all coming together for a night.  We eat dinner together, worship and then the parents lead their kids in a devotion.  The night is only about an hour and a half long but it is great to see parents leading their kids in a devotion and being the solid faith rock that they need to be for their kids.  I also send home devotions with them for the next month ahead so that they can continue faith growth outside of the church as well.

I have been hanging out quite a bit with my friends Trent and Shawna up here.  Trent was one of the first guys that I met up here, he works at the golf course that I play at alot.  He recently just moved his fiance Shawna up here about a month or so ago, and I usually see them a couple times a week, and some of their other friends as well.  Its nice to have some people around my age to hang out with, and friends outside of the church as well.

Our Children's church is just starting to work on our Christmas service that we will be putting on the week before Christmas which is really exciting. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas and all the different things that I am in charge of here, I really have been insanely busy planning for these holidays.  So busy to the point that I think that it will be pretty slow for me in the next couple of weeks as far as things that I will have to work on during the day.  I normally have a couple meetings a week at night which allows me to leave the office early and go do what I need to get done for the day and be back at church at night.  I also got recruited to be on the hand bell crew here as well which is odd not having to blow a trumpet to make music.

I have been working out quite a bit, and now that I am actually back in shape I have targeted a half marathon in June which Im going to start training for soon up here.  It should be a pleasant fifty or sixty degrees about that time of the year so I wont have to worry about an 80 or 90 degree day which should be nice.  

In a couple of days mom and Kari are coming up here, which will be awesome to see them and show them everything that I have been talking about for the last five months or so.  The highs for the week are supposed to be about 15-20 so they should get a good taste of what the temp is starting to get like, its only getting colder.  The nice thing about the cold is that I think im starting to get used to it.  Last week I grilled out some chedderwurst and polish in jeans and a sweatshirt in about twenty degrees with no issue.  Dont worry I had a beer in hand as well, s it was super Wisconsin.

Hearing the news of Great grandmothers passing was difficult this past week, but I know that God's will was certainly done in her life, and that she was a beacon of light for those in darkness around her. I will never forget all the kit kats that she gave to me, and helped me become the pudgy gradeschooler that I was.  Seriously though a great woman, and a huge part of my life for years, and now she is off to a far better place than we  can even imagine right now.

Overall I'm still having a blast up here, and I know that right now, more than ever this is where God wants me to be.  Ill be back home in January for those who have not heard yet for a multitude of school things, and also to see family and friends.  I will be back from January 26th to February 4th.  Were planning a family get together in Chicago from February 2nd-3rd. My mom is working on details for that so if you have any questions I suppose call her or me and we can let you know what we know.  I think we are just going to rent some rooms at a hotel all together so that its easier for me to try to see everyone rather than trying to travel all over the country in like a four day time span.

Thank you for all your continued support and prayers it is greatly appreciated! The pictures below are from a plane ride that one of our church members took me on, one of the most ridiculous things I have ever done, these are just a few of the pictures, Ill have more when I come back for sure.

Gods blessings 

Alaskan snow princess update: None

Snow: About 5 inches 

This is an old missle site from the cold war, thought Kyle/Uncle Kev would get a kick out of this

McKinley in the distance

Rally Day Week Madness

That's right rally day week madness. It sounds foolish, like I only took one English class when I was at school, oh wait I did only take one English class at school but regardless that is the one phrase I could use to describe this past week.

This past Sunday we had our big fall kick off of all the events and different things going on at Our Redeemer, and my week leading up to it was insane.  The week started off pretty easy with my classic day off on Monday, followed by a Tuesday morning round of golf with one of the members of the church here, and where I put up my worst score of the year. Like were talking about Uncle Joel kind of numbers here.  Anyways so then Late Tuesday night we had "a storm unlike one I have ever seen in my twenty seven years here" as Chuck told me the day after.  We had wind gusts of up to 130 MPH for six hours straight here.  I started the storm off outside enjoying it with a cigar and nice seat in my lawn chair.  Soon enough though I ended up heading inside due to the fact that the trees were parallel with the ground, and starting to snap.

To make a long story short, I didnt have power at my house until late Thursday night, so just over two full days without power.  We got power down at the church after not having it for about a day and a half so I was able to go back to work on Thursday.  I had plenty of work to do still so I ended up working three twelve hour days in a row which was pretty killer but everything got done in plenty of time, and the Bears destroyed the Colts on Sunday so it all turned out to be just fine.  I certainly was happy though to see my day off this Monday. Most certainly I earned that day off this past week.


I'm in the process of attempting to implement a few new ministries here at Our Redeemer so Rally day was a big opportunity to have my grand unveiling of the ministries, and I will continue to talk them up in the next month or so until each one has their big kick off.

This past weekend we also started construction on our new playground that we received here at Our Redeemer for all of our little guys to play on.  Saturday was the first big day day of construction and after a full day of work we got much of the base work done.  The soil here, well really isn't soil, its more like a mixture of rocks, boulders, and a bit of dirt is quite fun to try to dig through.  That has been one of the biggest difficulties since starting this project is trying to sort through all the dirt to just be able to lay the holes. We are over halfway done with construction thus far through the help of many awesome volunteers and we should have it completely done in a weeks time or so hopefully.

In addition to Rally Day this past weekend we started Children's Church which is our version of Sunday school up here.  This is the first model of Sunday school that I have ever used like this so it has taken some time to adjust to it, but I am excited to learn more about it, and learn a new way to doing ministry to kids that age.

Tomorrow is the huge Bears Packers game, So I will be heading up to a local restaurant with a couple buddies I have met up here from a church just north or me, who also work at the golf course that I play at quite often.  I have a church meeting at seven our time however so I am hoping that the game will be in the Bears hands by the third quarter so that I dont miss anything too big.  It would be far to sweet to watch the packers lose more games then they did last season in the first two weeks of the season, but I know that traveling up to Green Bay is going to be rough especially since the 49ers angered them a bit last week.

Apart from that life continues on rolling up here, the week to week preparation is going to get easier as I adjust to it, but there is quite a bit more to do now that we are no longer in the summer months here.  But it is nice to feel busy quite a bit more often, rather than sitting at my computer wondering what I should do.

I pray for you all at home often, and miss you quite a bit


Alaskan Snow Princess Update: None

Bears: 1-0

Cubs: Hopeless

In Christ,


Ryan

My upstairs neighbors (Chuck and Terri) Dog Jorge

"Sleeping Lady" Can you see her?

Pretty cool view of the inlet from up in a tree I climbed on a hike

"The three kings" Foraker, Hunter, McKinley